We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species – Is It Worth the Cost?

Re:We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species – Is It Worth the... by 0xfeba on Monday March 20, 2017 @01:50PM (#13916172)

Yeah, you don't need the engineering, or even artificial selection to make this analogy. Species is just a human-invented term to categorize and only roughly matches nature.

What is a species? Organisms that can interbreed? Well we have Ligers. Percentage of similar DNA? Well what percent? Morphology? It all boils down, eventually, into what we think it is.

That is, there are no two identical animals (ignore identical twins for the moment). Attempts to resurrect/restore things as they were (for moral posterity or whathaveyou) are futile. We can only hope to restore some sort of balance that helps ourselves.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species – Is It Worth the... by jcoffland on Monday March 20, 2017 @02:26PM (#13916447)

I don't see the problem here. Even if our distinctions are somewhat arbitrary they do have meaning. E.g. there is a difference between frogs and cats. If we bring back a creature from the past, like the Mammoth, who cares if it's exactly the same?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species – Is It Worth the... by 0xfeba on Tuesday March 21, 2017 @09:44AM (#13922102)

No problem, just a thought experiment.

> If we bring back a creature from the past, like the Mammoth, who cares if it's exactly the same?

And that's what I would say.

[ Parent | on HN ]